Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The Great Unwatched: Pick-up (1975)

Part of: The Exploitation Cinema Collection (20 Films)

Director: Bernard Hirschenson

Runtime: 78 minutes

Part of the point behind this project was to teach myself a lesson, specifically that I don't really need to buy every single DVD or DVD box set that looks like a bargain. Given that goal, Pick-up was an excellent way to start off, since it's pretty lousy. A goofy-looking guy picks up two female hitchhikers -- one all sexual va-va-voom and the other morose. The three of them get stranded in a swamp, where they proceed to run around, have sex (sometimes on a swing!), and hallucinate about clowns, politicians, and priestesses of Apollo. I think this was somebody's idea of making a trippy movie, but somehow they failed to take into account things like maintaining a consistency of internal reality and, oh, entertainment value. There's a couple of really painful flashbacks (including one involving child molestation by a priest) to break up the trippiness and a nastily misogynistic sequence toward the end. If the other nineteen films in this set at this same level of quality, I may have wasted twenty bucks.

Worth the Purchase: Hardly.

Stats: 1/403 movies watched in 1 day.
Currently projected end-time is April 5th, 2010.
Goal for end-time is February 25th, 2010.

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